Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help

Helping is a fundamental human activity, but it can also be a frustrating one. All too often our sincere offers of help are resented, resisted, or refused—and we often react the same way when people try to help us. In this seminal book on the topic—named one of the top five leadership books of 2009 by strategy+business magazine—Edgar Schein

Overview

Helping is a fundamental human activity, but it can also be a frustrating one. All too often our sincere offers of help are resented, resisted, or refused—and we often react the same way when people try to help us. In this seminal book on the topic—named one of the top five leadership books of 2009 by strategy+business magazine—Edgar Schein analyzes the social and psychological dynamics common to all types of helping relationships, explains why help is often not helpful, and shows what any would-be helpers must do to ensure that their assistance is both welcomed and genuinely useful. Using examples from many types of relationships—doctors and patients, consultants and clients, husbands and wives—Schein offers specific techniques and illuminating examples that help us determine what type of help to offer and how best to offer it in any situation. These techniques not only apply to all kinds of one-on-one helping in personal and professional relationships, teaching, social work, and medicine but also can be usefully applied to teamwork and to organizational leadership.

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Meet the Author

Edgar H. Schein is currently a Sloan Fellows Professor of Management Emeritus and continues at the Sloan School part time as a Senior Lecturer. He is also the Founding Editor of "Reflections" the Journal of the Society for Organizational Learning devoted to connecting academics, consultants, and practitioners around the issues of knowledge creation, dissemination and utilization. He has made a notable mark on the field of organizational development in many areas, including career development, group process consultation, and organizational culture. Schein has been a prolific researcher, writer, teacher and consultant. Besides his numerous articles in professional journals he has authored fourteen books including Organizational Culture and Leadership (over 153,000 sold) and The Corporate Survival Handbook (over 34,000 sold). He is generally credited with inventing the term corporate culture